Österreicher Kreuz, Bad Honnef

The Austrian Cross in Bad Honnef, a town in the Rhein-Sieg district of North Rhine-Westphalia, is the oldest surviving gravesite in the town. It is located on the street Am Wolfshof corner Am Schönblick. The monument is listed as an architectural monument.

After their defeat in the First Coalition War against revolutionary France, 187 Austrian soldiers had died of hospital fever in Honnef in 1793 as a result of their retreat. They were buried on a field at the later Selhoferstraße near the later municipal cemetery. To mark the burial ground a simple stone cross in baroque style with inscription was erected in the same year, which last stood directly at the path in the hedge of a garden. Due to its location, it was exposed to damage by carts. For this reason, between 1892 and 1895, the cross was rebuilt after the efforts of a manufacturer from Düren: after the owner of the garden ceded a few square meters of his land to the municipality, the latter had the cross placed on a substructure of house stone and enclosed it with a wrought-iron grille. Emperor Franz Joseph I paid most of the costs of the new installation and arranged for the Habsburg double-headed eagle to be incorporated into the lattice. On April 21, 1895, a ceremony was held to inaugurate the monument in the presence of a representative of the Austrian government.

A renovation of the monument took place between 1983 and 1985. The entry in the monument list of the city of Bad Honnef took place on October 13, 1993.